'Hysterical, ridiculous': Jets' O'Donovan slams FFA over 10-match ban

By James Gardiner

5 August 2018 — 8:47pm

Defiant Jets striker Roy O’Donovan will not tone down his win-at-all-costs approach and says Football Federation Australia have “picked the wrong man” if they expect the Irishman to walk away from the A-League.

In the first interview since his appeal against a 10-match ban for a high-foot challenge on Victory keeper Lawrence Thomas in the grand final was dismissed, O’Donovan slammed FFA’s judicial process and labelled the way in which he had been depicted “hysterical and ridiculous”.

O’Donovan pleaded guilty in May to serious foul play, but insists he was going for the ball when he collected Lawrence on the cheek and believes that the sanction is excessive. The keeper was not seriously hurt and finished the game.

“I take full responsibility for making the challenge, but I made the challenge from a good place, not with any malice or intent,” O’Donovan told Fairfax Media from Spain, where the Jets have been training. “It is very hard to come to grips with the way that I have been portrayed. I play the game hard, but I play the game fair. You can be made a scapegoat very easily, and you can get a reputation very easily. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a liar. I was 100 per cent honest in my attempts to score a goal there. I will never change from that."

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The 32-year-old will serve the first match of the ban, the second largest in A-League history, in the Jets’ FFA Cup match against Gold Coast Knights at Cbus Stadium on Tuesday. Depending how far the Jets progress in the knockout competition, O’Donovan could miss up to nine rounds of the A-League.

Thrown the book: O'Donovan failed in his appeal against a 10-match ban for the challenge. Credit:AAP

“I think they are trying to make me walk away from it,” O’Donovan said. “The problem they have is that I am too stubborn. If they had given me four games and said, ‘We’d rather you not play in the A-League’, I probably would have took it. The fact that they are trying to test my resolve, my resilience ... they are testing the wrong man.

“You are playing high-level sport, it’s the last minute of a grand final and you are trying to score a goal. Accidents happen. I feel like the process around the suspension and the appeal; having to speak to judges who have never kicked a football in their life, that is where the frustration lies. You feel powerless.”

After three hours of evidence at the appeal hearing, the panel of Alan Sullivan QC, Justice Rachel Pepper and former national league player Peter Tsekenis took 10 minutes to dismiss the case. O’Donovan questioned whether the panel fully understood the cut-throat nature of professional football.

“I am getting prosecuted by solicitors who have never played the game,” he said. “This is my livelihood. I have been a professional footballer going on 17 years. Every time I step on a football pitch means something. I have come from a system in England where if you don’t win games, you don’t play. If you don’t win games, you get relegated. If you get relegated people lose jobs. Players, staff, kit men, cleaning ladies. That is the background I come from. If the ball is in the air and we need to score a goal to win a football game, damn right I am going to try and score a goal. For three judges to tell you what you have done is bizarre, shows contempt for football players from my background.”

'Blurred vision': O'Donovan argued he was impaired by an earlier challenge which saw his cheek broken.Credit:AAP

In handing down the initial finding, Ethics and Disciplinary Committee chairman John Marshall SC said O’Donovan’s ‘‘flying kick’’ was ‘‘the most dangerous play which has ever come before the committee’’.

“To say it was worse than Kevin Muscat, who did hurt somebody and ended his career. The Melbourne Victory (assistant) coaches go on the pitch and assault a player and get four games ... what world are we living in,” O’Donovan said. “I made a challenge on the pitch for a football – I did mis-time it – but to get 10 games is ridiculous and an indictment on football in Australia.”

O’Donovan had suffered a fractured eye-socket from an elbow by Besart Berisha earlier in the decider and argued that his vision was blurred when he collided with Thomas. The panel, though, said he showed a ‘‘disregard for the danger’’ his action posed and he ‘‘used excessive force and brutality’’.

“The facial surgeon who I saw afterwards, he listed everything: broken eye socket, broken nose ... these solicitors and barristers, not only are they solicitors and barristers, they are above doctors now,” O’Donovan said. “They dismissed any broken bones I had in my face and eye.”